


The Brightest Stars

by Radicalkay



Series: Hurt and Healing [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff, M/M, OT3, a little dark but, anyway, general cuteness, i love them?, so much?, this is basically my take on post tfa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-12 22:42:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5683693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radicalkay/pseuds/Radicalkay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>//Sometime when she was meditating, she could feel them. Two shattered beacons of light, calling out to her across the galaxy, begging her to come home to them so they could be whole once again.//</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Brightest Stars

Rey is alone. She’s lost herself, in the bustle and panic at the base. Her mind is caught in a daze that she cannot shake. When General Organa pulls her aside, eyes sad and sorrowful and apologetic, and asks for Rey to tell her what’s happened, everything that’s happened (“Because it’s easier to do it now, while it’s fresh on your mind, rather then after you’ve ate and slept and let the nightmares fade away because then you must bring them _back_ ”) and Rey tells her. She starts with Jakku and it’s fierce, warm sands whipping against her eyes and she ends with her soul being ripped from her chest as she watched her only friend get his back get severed in two.

(Perhaps the General is right, because there is a certain lightness on her chest now that the darkness has been spilled, poured into another body to help her carry the weight of the sorrow.)

But Rey is still lost, wandering the halls of the base, not quite sure what she’s looking for, not quite sure what she’ll find. Not yet has she adjusted to the world not fluidly moving around her as the sand did. The slightest of breeze could topple mountains, but here, there are buildings made of metal and stone and trees that arc towards the sky and rivers that run endlessly.

The harsh lights hurt her eyes and the cold here is not quite like the cold on Jakku. There, in the night, the air stilled and the hot, desert sunlight was leeched from the earth, leaving only a stale, brittle chill that burrowed into Rey’s bones. She often felt that she’d never be able to shake it. But here, here in the florescent halls it’s a different cold; its fresh and clean.

When she spots a sign pointing to the infirmary, she finds her feet lead her there automatically. Or perhaps it’s the tugging in her chest (is it the Force? She’s not quite sure what that feels like yet) that will always lead her back to Finn. The medidroid doesn’t ask her who she is when she asks for Finn, it merely leads her to a door and states that he’s still in critical condition, no visitors.

She does not argue. She is used to waiting.

Curling into a surprisingly soft chair, Rey waits. She waits and watches rebels dart to and from, looking for family, friends, lovers. She flinches when they get to close, because she’s never seen this many people before, not all in once place, not with so much energy and motion and _life_. Its overwhelming, the heat and the noise that rang in her ears. On Jakku, even in town, no one spoke, no one laughed or cried; there was a desolate, lonely silence hung over the planet.

A man skids to a stop in front of her, a wild look upon his face and determination in his dark eyes. Determination that crumbles into desperation when he sees the door leading to Finn is still closed. With a sigh that wracks he entire being, and a sadness that leaks into her heart without her even realizing, he turns to face her. “You must be Rey, right? I’m-“

“Poe Dameron.” She states softly, unfurling slightly from the small cocoon she’s made for herself. “You’re BB-8’s owner. The stolen jacket.” Her lips quirk up at this, and Poe is confused. He is confused at the soft, lilting accent, confused at the sight of this small, slight girl who seems as if she could blow away. He couldn’t see how someone so small could feel so big, and she was because he could feel her, feel her presence in a way he’d never felt anyone else’s before.

But he said none of this, he simply nodded and slid into the chair next to her, restless and impatient, his leg bouncing and his hands shaking as his eyes twitched about and his mind jumped from one bad conclusion to the next. Finn would live, he had to, for Poe had already pledged his life to the man that saved him.

She was still, breathing slowly and steadily and closing her eyes, feeling for the pulse of life that she knew to be Finn’s and willing it awake, willing him to survive. She knew Finn would live, knew the light of determination in his eyes and the defiance in his step.

They stayed like that until Poe dropped off to sleep and Rey dropped off into nothing, a fitful, horrible rest that shook her and drained her. It was too loud, too bright, the air too crisp and cold. She could not sleep, she could not rest. She was envious of the man beside her, how easily he could slip into slumber.

Until she felt it, felt the fear and the pain and the agony of having your mind ripped from you and torn apart, shredded, in front of your very eyes.

She no longer felt jealous.

She hoped Poe could feel the warmth she was sending his way, wondered if that’s why he started awake and met her curious stare.

He wondered if she knew she was doing it, reaching out with small and deft fingers, feeling and prodding his mind. His first instinct was to recoil from the feeling that left him drained and sad and broken, but this was different. This was not a dark, angry force. She was simply curious, and sad, but mostly curious, and small and not wanting to cause any harm. She didn’t prod, she simply let herself surround him, and Poe allowed her.

 

\--

 

It was a day and a half before Finn came out of surgery, and a day more before Poe realized that while he had left to get food and shower, Rey had not once stirred from her post outside Finn’s door, and then from beside his bed.

“Rey, when was the last time you ate?” He started cautiously. She turned her eyes to him. “I-I’m not quite sure. Perhaps as Maz Kanada’s? I think I ate some odd type of fruit there. It didn’t quite agree with me.” Poe blanches and he realizes she must have gone days without eating at all on Jakku, days of living off nothing but a quarter ration.

She was starving half to death and she didn’t even see it.

“Come on, you need to get something in you before you waste away. A shower wouldn’t hurt either.”

Rey is confused. Confused that this man, this good, kind man, was trying to help her. “But who-“ she glanced as Finn. “They’ll come find us if he wakes up.” Poe assures her. She’s quite as he leads her to the mess hall, and its only right before they enter does she halt suddenly. Her breath is ripped away from her and her voice shakes. “There’s, there’s so many _people_ ”.

Poe doesn’t know how help. He’s only good at jokes and laughing and bringing joy to people’s lives. He can’t help this girl who’s never seen the world outside of a sandy prison.

But he must.

“It’ll be okay, we’ll only be in for a second to grab some food and then we can leave again.”

Her breath is stolen from her at the sight of an abundance of food, piled up in tins and bins and overflowing. She thought of all the scavenger children she watched waste away because they weren’t fast enough, or smart enough, or ruthless enough. _She though of those she’d fought, tooth and nail, leaving them out to die because she was selfish, she’d given too much already, she simply wanted to survive they couldn’t fault her for that._ She wished she could take the food to them.

But instead she grabs only several slices of bread and an interesting kind of soup. She isn’t ready for anything bigger. (She’d wait for Finn, they could experience it together)

He leads her outside to eat, and they sit by the edge of the trees. She breathes in and a smile breaks across her face, pure and simple and _light._ Poe wished his heart would stop breaking at the wonder on her face.

She can feel _everything_ , the trees and the plants and the animals. Its all buzzing beneath her fingertips and she’s never felt so alive. Every inch of the earth she touched sent sparks racing up her fingertips, flooding her veins with energy. Perhaps she’d never truly been alive before now, she’d simply existed in a state of limbo, waiting waiting waiting for someone who would never return.

She’s barely got down the food (too much taste, too much seasoning. She’s used to bland, dry, portions that barely fill her up, not rich bread and creamy vegetable soup that had her full in two bites) when Poe is leading her back inside to the “freshers”. Rey can’t believe the amount of water they waste. Who uses something as precious as water to bathe, when it could be saved and stored to drink? But Poe is kind and she almost trusts him so she agrees to shower, but when she turned and asks him to show her how (she’s never bathed with _water_ before) his face turns scarlet and he sputters something about getting Jess to help her.

(He knows that she doesn’t know, that she doesn’t understand how the world outside of Jakku works but that doesn’t keep his face from flaming red)

At first Rey is cautious but Jess is sweet (like Finn, Like Poe). Rey can feel the good in her, the light, so she lets her guard down and smiles at her new maybe-friend. (She has quite a few of those these days, and she’s not sure what to do with them. Her throat is growing tired from speaking so much, but speaking seems to be a necessity in the Resistance.)

When Jess is showing her the different lotions and liquids to clean and scrub away the years of grit and pain built up on her skin, how to lather her hair with oils that would strip it of it’s sun fried smell, Rey asks her why Poe was so nervous. “He’s shown me other things? I don’t understand.” Jess laughs loudly. “It’s a different culture that he grew up with. On his planet, Men and women don’t show each other their bodies unless they’re going to be intimate with each other.”

Rey huffed, gathering the numerous bottles Jess had spread out on the sink and carrying them into her shower stall. “You’re all strange. Its just skin.”

While she intends on taking a short shower she takes anything but. Once she’s under the pulsing spray she doesn’t want to leave. Never before has she felt this sort of warmth in and under her skin, it’s not rough and course and scalding, it’s gentle and soothing and washes away the scars on her skin.

She doesn’t know how long she stays, but long after her hair smells sweet and her skin is smooth and the water begins to grow cold Poe wanders back in and Rey has another dilemma. “I haven’t got any clothes.” She says quietly, and all at once she is reminds of what she’s lost, what she’s never had. But Poe thought of this and he hands her clothes, _his_ clothes, and Rey wraps herself in a scent that smells of wood and oil and fire.

 

\--

 

Their days are long, and after a while Poe can no longer sit with her by Finn’s bedside. He returns to work, running training rounds and fixing his ship. Rey does not know what to do. She has yet to seek out General Organa, and she doesn’t feel it right to leave Finn’s side yet.

When she spots the torn up jacket crumpled in the back of the room she plucks it off the floor, searches around until she finds some thread and a needle, and then returns to her post by Finn’s bed. Her steady hands slowly patch the back together, leaving a small, bumpy seam, a reminder. Poe’s eyes mist over when she shows him that afternoon, and she can feel the rush of emotions flooding from him. She offers him a smile, and he scoops her up into a hug.

Rey is surprised to find that she hugs back.

Poe always makes sure to come back to the infirmary after training, to see Finn and will him awake and to babble aimlessly about his day while Rey watched on. Each time he comes the circles are darker under his eyes, his breath more haggard. Rey wants to tell him to sleep, but she knows she has no right when she can’t sleep herself. (He has to remind her to eat; she would forget)

He’s unsurprised when one day he arrives and Leia is talking to Rey. It’s time for her to embark on her mission to find Luke Skywalker, to train in the ways of the force.

(She feels that it’s the right time, but that doesn’t make it any easier.)

So she holds Finn’s hand until she can’t, holds his hand until she’s in the sky and zooming towards another system.

Two weeks after Rey leaves, Finn wakes up.

Poe thinks its cruel how the world works sometimes.

But he’s happy, he’s content, because Finn is _alive,_ he’s cursing and crying and feeling more things then he’s ever felt before and its heartbreaking but its so, so human. Poe wonders if Finn has ever felt human before.

_She’s mediating when she feels it, the ripple, no, the CRY of life that nearly toppled her from her perch. Before she can help it and grin rips across her face, and then a laugh, and Luke watches her with a smile as she proclaims to the heavens that Finn, her friend, her very first and best friend, is ALIVE!_

 

_\--_

 

It’s not easy. In fact, it’s anything but. Finn longs for Rey. He wants to give her a hug, he longs to wrap his arms and hands and legs around anything with life and to leech the warmth out of it, he just wants _touch_. God, he craves it and Poe is only too eager to give. He helps Finn in physical conditioning, teaching him how to walk, how to move in a way that’s not constricted and forced, he teaches Finn that its ok to ask for help when he feels like he can’t make it.

(He’s there to catch him when his legs crumble beneath him and he cries out for the pain in his back in his head in his heart, he sobs because he cant shake the wiring in his brain that shouts that he should be terminated. He’s weak, he’s useless to the Resistance, just _end it._ )

_She’s there too, with her gentle presence that moves across the galaxy, soothing and careful. She wraps herself around his heart, warming it with her scorched sands. Finn can feel her, and wishes he could reach back._

Sometime Finn can’t sleep, and Poe is always there. Next to his bed at the infirmary, telling stories of his family, of his home planet. He recounts tales of old, of the Empire, of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia and Hans Solo. Legends he’d heard before he could even walk, but had been erased from the Order.

Finn thinks that storytelling is a much better pastime than dreaming.

If Finn has nightmares, Poe has them tenfold. He can’t shake it, the harsh, probing knives that ripped his brain apart, turning every fear he’s ever had out in front of him to be picked apart, mocked. Every time his eyes closed red flashed behind his eyes, searing pain ripped through him and he was forced awake, shivering and burning all at once.

He can’t sleep. It’s an impossible thing to do when there’s an intruder inside your head that you can’t shake, you can’t get rid of. (It’s worse because it was _him_ , it was the boy he’d seen running around base, who he’d played with. His mom used to send him to Leia’s quarters for dinner. His eye’s would sparkle and shine and the day he was sent away to train he whispered to Poe that he felt like he was _“Just really gunna be someone ya know?”_ and it _hurts_ )

(Poe goes and sits in Leia’s- the _General’s_ \- quarters sometimes. They don’t have to talk, just exist. _I knew him. You knew him.)_

 

_\--_

After waking, it takes Finn three months until he has permission to move out of the infirmity. He’s was still healing, still needing a crutch to walk and a brace for his back, but he thanked the heavens he no longer had to stare at the pale hairline cracks running through the ceiling above him. (He had them memorized and could draw them with his eyes closed; he didn’t have much to do when Poe or his squadron weren’t around to keep him company)

The resistance has grown by the hundreds by the time Finn is out, children and grandchildren of those alive and who fought during the times of the Empire. No one wishes to see the galaxy fall to such darkness again. Rooms are limited, most already stacked with four beings in one small space, and for a small fraction of a second, Finn is afraid they’ll kick him out.

Poe simply grins at him and says, “I’m a Captain, my rooms bigger anyway _and_ I don’t have a roommate. You can stay with me!” He states it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world and Finn can do nothing but gaze at the man like he hung the moon and the stars in every system.

 

\--

 

_Time passed very slowly on the islands, like syrup, smooth and thick. It flowed in such a way that the days and weeks ran together. Rey couldn’t say if she’d been there training for a month of if she’d been there for a thousand lifetimes. Perhaps she would grow old here and wouldn’t even notice. She often thought that Luke hadn’t meant to stay as long as he had. He’d simply never found the time to go._

_Learning the ways of the force was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Letting everything flow from her mind and slipping into a state of barely being conscious, kept alive by the beat of the force in and around her, took weeks to master._

_Sometime when she was meditating, she could feel them. Two shattered beacons of light, calling out to her across the galaxy, begging her to come home to them so they could be whole once again. At first they’d troubled her, but she’d learned to use them as something constant, something that could keep her focused. Luke knew that her thoughts never strayed far from them, and he di not reprimand her. “There were once two that I called my family, that I loved.” He’d told her once (She loved when he told his stories, he would look off into the distance and speak lowly, making her crane her ear for each important syllable) “The old ways of the force teach you to have no attachments, I’ve found the only way to be one with the force is to be connected with those around you.”_

_Luke was patient. Rey was good at waiting._

 

_\--_

 

Finn leaned into Poe’s side, inhaling the scent of trees and smoke and something spicy; he let it wrap around him like a blanket. It had been a year since Rey had gone away. He didn’t wonder if he’d ever see her again because he knew he would; she whispered to him in his dreams sometimes, on nights when he couldn’t go to sleep because the nightmares were too great. Her voice would carry across the stars and she would sing him to slumber, telling him stories of her training. Poe never said, but Finn knew she did for him too.

He’d finally been given a duty; he was to teach and tell the ways of the Order, inform captains and soldier of their fighting techniques and their weapons. The first time he’d set foot in the training room, seen the model blasters set out in front of him he’d froze. _You have potential FN-2187._ It took him a week to set foot in there again without shaking so hard that he had to sit down.

Once he was there however, he shone. His ability to breakdown and reassemble blasters was incredible; he had it down to a science and could probably do it with his eyes closed. His fighting style was direct, rigid. His eyes would often glaze over when he was teaching, and he’d have to shake himself as if to bring his mind back to the present.

Poe and General Organa often reminded him that he could say no, he had a choice, but he’d made up his mind the second he rescued Poe from Kylo Ren; he would do anything to help the Resistance.

He’d thought it would be easy once he learned how to walk again, but again he was wrong. Everything about the Resistance ran differently from the Order. It was too messy, too loud, to unorganized and yet it ran smoother then any operation Finn had ever been a part of. Even after a year, he still felt out of place, still woke up before the sun was up sometime to go for a run, to start training for a war that he had a new side on. Usually Poe would let him go, rolling over with sleepy eyes and brushing his fingers across Finn’s skin. But if it happened too many days in a row Poe would groan and tighten his grip around Finns waist and whine into his neck about how it got _cold_ when he left-

That was new as well.

Finn craves physical attention. The brush of fingers, shoulders, thighs that send sparks racing down Poe’s spine. He’s always got a hand clapped on Poe’s shoulder, or waist, or he’s tangled their fingers together out of excitement. Poe doesn’t know what to do with this boy, this _kid_ that only wants to learn about the world and all the love it can hold.

Finn remembered seeing people kissing, holding hands around base and disappearing into rooms at the end of the night. When he asks Poe, he tells him that that’s what people do when they care about each other.

The first time Finn kisses Poe on the cheek, the pilots face flames red, and his crew giggle at them behind their hands. Finn finds that he likes the feel of his hand tangled in Poe’s, likes the warmth that radiates between their thighs when they sit together. (He hears Poe whimpering one night, and when it doesn’t stop Finn slips off his cot and into Poe’s bed, taking the older man in his arms, running his fingers up and down his sides and across his chest. When they woke the next morning Poe’s back was pressed against Finns chest, their legs tangled together and Finn’s nose tucked in the crook of his neck. They got rid of the extra cot the next week.)

 

\--

 

Poe knew that Finn was worried about Rey, about what she would think when she got back. “Will she be different? What if she doesn’t want to be my friend anymore? What if she doesn’t like you? What if I have to choose?” Poe merely kissed his forehead and held him close, because he knew he would never make Finn choose, and neither would Rey. They would never dream of splitting apart this boy that took so long to heal back together. They would not be responsible for the scar reopening on his back.

_“I think it’s time.” Luke said one morning, and Rey’s heart leapt into her through and the force flowing through her held its breath. “To go home?” she asks hopefully, and the twinkle in his eye told her the answer._

It’s Finn that grabs him from his post, eyes wide and full of excitement, General Organa standing behind him with a soft smile on her face. “She’s back Poe she’s back!” Poe knows she's back, he can _feel_ it, feel the power radiating from the ship outside. He can feel the joy pulsing through Finn, and it’s the purest thing he’s ever encountered.

The two of them wait, side-by-side, Finn’s fingers intertwined with Poe’s, as the ship’s doors lower. Rey is waiting on the other side, and the simplest, brightest smile Finn has ever seen glows on her face. Before Finn knows what he’s doing, he untangles himself from Poe and launched forward.

She exchanges a wordless glance with the man next to her, who Finn presumes to be Skywalker, and she’s dashing forward, meeting Finn halfway. His arms circle her waist and he spins her around; his laughter echoing throughout the base. (It’s the sweetest thing she’s ever heard, plucked strait from the force life around them) Rey wonders if everyone else can feel the world shake when they collide, arms wrapped around each other as they babble questions and stories at each other that mean nothing but everything all at once.

Her two beacons, dots of floating light across the universe, are next to her and she’s _home_ -

She catches Poe’s eye over Finn’s shoulder. He’s happy and lost and content all at once and she reaches out to him. _Come here_ , she whispers, and he starts. “I didn’t want to- be in the way, Finn’s he’s, he’s really missed you and-“

Finn unwraps himself from Rey, keeping one hand rested firmly on her waist. “Don’t be stupid.” So Poe isn’t.

When all three of them meet, the three brightest stars in the system, circling each other in perfect unity, the force _sings_ in perfect harmony.

**Author's Note:**

> ok so i MAY add to this I havent decided. i just have a deep deep DEEP love for this ship and i want to write all about them all the time. I've literally seen the movie 3 times and im going to see it again on wednesday and after that I'll decide if im going to write anymore. (k so i may have already started on a pt 2 but)


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